What I'm listening to

I'm listening to a remarkable book right now. A memoir of a woman who lost her stillborn baby and then got pregnant and had another child. She's reading her memoir on the audiobook, and I feel like she's my sister in loss. I'm sorry I can't think of a less corny expression....A sisterhood of women who lose their babies before they are born. That she is a librarian who loved Paris...well, there is one more bond we share. A sisterhood of Francophile librarians who lose their babies before birth?

There are parts that have me crying, and others laughing....because she's got a fine sense of humor that shines through the grief.

I was reading an interview with the author where she talks about how a song brings to mind her baby. So I'm not the only mother who has a song for the "lost kid."

But the song that really meant a lot to me, the summer after my first kid died, was “I Still Miss Someone” by Johnny Cash. Someone had sent Edward “Johnny Cash at San Quentin,” and I loaded it on my iPod. I never hit replay, but I was always happy to hear the song, and I always thought, This is about me, and I was always grateful for the slightly inappropriate jauntiness with which Johnny Cash sang the song. A weird juxtaposition, in other words. I still love to hear that song, and it still reminds me of my first lost kid.

I do suspect that her writing down the whole experience was healing for her, not to mention a way to leave some lasting tribute to her lost kid and her loving husband. I certainly am finding it really healing to be able to blog about the ways in which I'm been dealing with my loss. Like a diary that others can dip into. I wonder if some of my dear readers might be sick of the frequent references to the baby and miscarriage, and so I get to say -- she wrote a whole book about her baby!

She reminds so eloquently is that the love we feel for our lost kids is good and right. Not morbid or weird or crazy. Normal to love a child, however small. Normal not to forget.